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Drifting is a judged sport, like gymnastics or high diving, with a panel of three judges picking winners of each round.

Ford Mustang driver Justin Pawlak slid to victory in the season opener of the 2012 Formula Drift championship, edging the Nissan S13 (AKA 240SX) of 2011 season champ Daijiro “Drift or Dai” Yoshihara in a unanimous decision in the final round. Formula D rookie Daigo Saito was third, though having extensive experience drifting in Japan, the 32-year-old Saito isn't quite a true rookie.

The opener of the seven-event season was once again run on the Izod IndyCar Series track in Long Beach, Calif., a week before the Indy cars take to those streets. The Formula Drift layout utilized four turns of the far eastern portion of the track, with packed grandstands all around the course. The section of track was narrow and lined with hard concrete, some of which reached out to bite off corners of the drifters' cars when they got too close. Different pavement surfaces meant that the first half of the track had much more grip than the second half, which also helped weed out the talent of the weekend.

Drifting is a judged sport, like gymnastics or high diving, with a panel of three judges picking winners of each round. The competition is run in an elimination bracket much like NHRA drag racing or the NCAA basketball tournament, with the winner of each two-car round advancing and the losers rolling onto their trailers. Each pair of cars launches at the same time, with one car leading the other through the turns. The idea is to slide gracefully sideways through each turn, flipping from left to right through the prescribed course. The following car tries to stay as close as possible to the leader, side by side going sideways is best. On more open drift courses such as Irwindale, followers can pass leaders, which almost always results in a bracket win for the passer. But at Long Beach the track was too narrow for that.

As always, there was a wide variety of entries, ranging from traditional old-school drift cars such as the S13 Nissan 240SX, Nissan 350 and 370 Zs and Mazda RX-8s, to modern muscle cars such as the Ford Mustang and the Chevrolet Camaro. All were represented in today's action.

That diversity was best represented in the final that saw Japanese driver Yoshihara in his aging but still highly competitive S13 take on Pawlak's new Mustang.

Round two will be at Road Atlanta on May 11-12. See www.formulad.com for more info.

Mark Vaughn
- After slumming in Europe five years covering F1 etc. Mark Vaughn interviewed with Autoweek at the 1989 Frankfurt motor show has been with us ever since because no one else will take him. Anyone?
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